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Slop Terrifies Me

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101–110 of 370 posts

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#101
post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

"People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much" how is this possible? are the less advanced economies protected from outside influences? are they also protected from immigration?

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#102
The terrifying part isn't obsolescence. It's mediocrity becoming the ceiling.

AI produces code that technically runs but lacks the thoughtfulness that makes software maintainable or elegant. The "90% solution" ships because economic pressure rewards speed over quality.

What haunts me: compilers don't make design decisions. IDEs don't choose architecture. AI does both, and most users accept those choices uncritically. We're already seeing juniors who've never debugged without a copilot.

The author's real question: what if most people genuinely don't care about the last 10%? Not from laziness, but because "good enough" is cheaper and we're all exhausted.

Dismissing this as "just another moral panic" feels too easy. The handcraft isn't dying because AI is too good. It's dying because mediocrity is profitable.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#103
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us have a perfectly good game plan for that. It's called Universal Basic Income. It's just that many powerful people have a vested interest in keeping the rest of us poor, miserable, and desperate, and so do everything they can to fight the idea that anything can ever be done to improve the lot of the poor without destroying the economy. Despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.

We can (and should) provide for those among us who aren't able to provide for themselves, without also firing everyone in the welfare department. UBI is shit. People need to do something in order to recieve money, even if the something is begging on the side of the freeway or going into the welfare office to claim benefits. Magic money from the sky is not the answer.

I agree with you about magic money. Frequently downvoted when I put it forward but by and large I think that the human psyche needs to have a daily sense of having "accomplished something".

Otherwise I suspect many of us will (reluctantly) drift off into lives that center around drinking alcohol, playing video games…

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#104
post #18
post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

It's regression to the mean in action. Everethyng eventually collapses into olygarhy and wevwill simply joing the unpriviliged rest in their misery. Likely with few wars civil or not here and there

It's not oligarchy, it's feudalism.

I wholeheartedly recommend you buying a new keyboard, by the way.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#105
post #80
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, will the rich start hiring elaborate casts of servants including butlers, footmen, lady's maids, and so on, since they'll be the only ones with the income?

They already do and always have. They never stopped hiring butlers (who are pretty well paid BTW), chefs, chauffeurs, maids, gardeners, nannies..... The terminology may have changed a bit, but they still employ people to do stuff for them One big difference is while professional class affluent people will hire cleaners or gardeners or nannies for a certain number or hours they cannot (at least in rich countries) hire…

A lot of it is probably more part-time but, yes, people who are some definition of rich spend more money on people to do more work for them (cleaning, landscaping, accounting, etc.) Doesn't mean they don't do any of those things--and outsourcing some can be more effort than it's worth--but they don't necessarily cut their own lawn or do car repairs.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#106
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the singularity is happening [Citation needed] No LLM is yet being used effectively to improve LLM output in exponential ways. Personally, I'm skeptical that such a thing is possible. LLMs aren't AGI, and aren't a path to AGI. The Singularity is the Rapture for techbros.

If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.

Yes, and that's why surpassing it doesn't lead to a singularity except over an infinite timeframe. This whole thing was stupid in the first place.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#107
post #10

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects. A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately…

> very many will struggle without work or prospects. People always say this with zero evidence. What are some real examples of real people losing their job today because of LLMs. Apart from copywriters (i.e. the original human slop creators) having to rebrand as copyeditors because the first draft of their work now comes from a language model.

Translators, graphic designers, soundtrack composers, call center/support workers, journalists, all have reported devastating losses coinciding with LLM use. And there's no shortage of companies press releases about cutting down thousands of jobs and saying it's because they leverage AI.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#108
Now that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context.

The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works.

> I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring.

For almost every product/service ever offered, it was possible to scale the "quality" of the offering while largely keeping the function or outcome static. In fact, lots of capitalistic activity is basically a search for the cheapest and fastest way to accomplish a minimum set of requirements. This leads to folks (including me!!) to lament the quality of certain products/services.

For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long.

Software is the same way. Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things. For some reason this is continually terrifying and shocking to many.

There is nothing surprising here, it's been this way for many years and will continue.

Obviously there are exceptions, but for the most part it's best to assume the above.

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.

If you think AGI is at hand why are you trying to sway a bunch of internet randos who don’t get it? :) Use those god-like powers to make the life you want while it’s still under the radar.

how do you take over the world if you have access to 1000 normal people? if AGI is by the original definition (long forgotten by now) of surpassing MEDIAN human at almost all tasks. How the rebranding of ASI into AGI happened without anyone noticing is kind of insane

Re: Slop Terrifies Me

#110
post #49
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to capitalism!

Besides being a bit of a shallow comment, what exactly do you imply here? That capitalism logically implies that the rich become richer? I don't think this is necessarily the case, it just needs a stronger government than what the US currently has in place. (e.g. progressive taxation and strong antitrust policy seem to work fairly well in Europe).

>That capitalism logically implies that the rich become richer? I don't think this is necessarily the case,

It doesn't need to imply anything. It's an ideology, those promoting it will say whatever BS attracts people to it. In practice, what is happening in capitalist countries since 1970s (when they abandoned all pretense) is that the rich get way richer and everybody else is fucked.

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